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A collective strategy for analysing and preventing healthcare-related adverse events

A collective multidisciplinary analysis of adverse events helps to improve patient safety.

The occurrence of an adverse event which, with hindsight, could have been avoided, places the onus on healthcare professionals to reflect on how such events can be prevented in future. In addition to this individual identification of healthcare-related adverse events, a detailed analysis to determine how they could have been prevented sometimes requires the collaboration of all the healthcare professionals involved.

Collective analysis methods have been developed, primarily in hospitals, to analyse adverse events as a team, with the aim of preventing such events from recurring. A morbidity and mortality conference (M&MC) is a means of learning collectively from errors, so as to improve professional healthcare practice and the quality of care.

In France, this method is mainly practised in hospitals, but it is applicable to all healthcare professionals, including those involved in primary care.

The collective multidisciplinary analysis of adverse events helps to improve communication and to promote teamwork and a culture of patient safety among healthcare professionals. Identification of underlying problems can benefit the entire medical community.

Healthcare-related adverse events and medical errors should not be hushed up, but identified and analysed, so as to improve practices.

©Prescrire 1 November 2011

"Analysing an adverse event in primary care: a multidisciplinary, collaborative process" Prescrire Int 2011; 20 (121): 274-278 (pdf, subscribers only)
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